More subtle than any beast of the field
by Vasiliki
Summary: Coda to 6x20. Spoilers up to the promo for the finale. Warnings: Angst, Ambivalent ending, Shifting POV between Castiel and Crowley. "Castiel stood in the garden looking at Dean, like Eve had stood in Eden looking at Adam, and the demon approached him."
1. Chapter 1

Title: More subtle than any beast of the field

Author: Vasiliki (May 12 & 15, 2011)

Genre and/or pairing: Coda for 6x20. Gen (because Crowley's opinions are just Crowley's opinions) or pre-slash, depending on your goggles. (this episode, though, wears Dean/Cas-tinted goggles, so in order to stay true to the show… ;))

Warnings: Angst. Ambivalent ending – like what we've seen in the show before.

Spoilers: Up to 6x20 and the promo for the finale.

Author's Notes:

a) The title is from: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made" (Genesis 3:1)

b) I was reminded of the difference between time on Heaven and Earth from zatnikatel's "Trust".

c) The "kite-line" used to be "anchor" but became a homage to the last line of murron's "Time on my hands".

d) I don't think in the finale Balthazar will have the role I gave him at the end of my fic; this is going to be Cthulhu's role. As long as Cthulhu is only going to eat Raphael and not Cas, we'll survive the finale.

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When Castiel saw Dean kneeling desolate in this free new world, that to Dean was now like a cemetery, he made his first choice. A choice he still found he couldn't regret, although in retrospect it could well have been the first of many wrong choices he made. But how could he have chosen differently, after all they had gone through together? How could he have left for Heaven immediately, without trying to save him first?

He chose to free Sam from Lucifer's Cage, without acting on the Lord's command. The first time, when he went for the Righteous Man, the Host had laid siege to Hell. This time, he descended to the bottom of the deepest level of the ninth circle of Hell all alone, and all alone he battled the demons he crossed paths with, and all alone he reached for Sam inside the Cage, where two archangels who loathed him almost shred his grace apart. But he succeeded in doing the impossible; or so he thought at first.

When his grace was healed enough to be able to fly again, he went to Sam. Seeing him walking away from Dean and his new family, offering his brother a chance to retire and live a normal life, Castiel was troubled by Sam's choice to not be included in that life. But his knowledge of humans was still limited, therefore he assumed his true form and returned to Heaven.

He learned that something had gone wrong more than a year later: Sam's soul was missing. Castiel's failure to notice he hadn't raised Sam whole had led to his soul remain trapped in the Cage for all this time. And this incomplete Sam had risked Dean's life on purpose! Although the brothers wanted to know who had pulled Sam out and why, the angel's shame at his weakness and guilt at his failure held his mouth firmly shut.

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Raphael beat him easily. His one day ultimatum was equivalent to less than an hour of earth time. And Castiel was spending his last living moments hesitating to destroy Dean's apple-pie life. Yet, this life would certainly be destroyed once Raphael brought the plan for the Apocalypse back on tracks. If only there existed a way to stop Raphael, while preserving Dean's happiness!

Then Crowley appeared. He approached Castiel in the garden Castiel stood looking at Dean, like Eve had stood in Eden looking at Adam, and slipped carefully chosen, mellifluous words of temptation in his ear. The demon echoed Rachel, a pure angel, in telling him he was chosen by God, and when Castiel still resisted the temptation of the deadly sin of pride, even in cost of his own life and the Winchesters' dream, the demon used Dean's own words and called him "the new sheriff" in Heaven. And Castiel could never not listen to Dean's words. So, proving that his humans had taught him the new path well, the angel, blinded by love and pride, turned and followed the serpent into sin.

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There were a few times, when Castiel managed to gather his courage enough to admit certain things about his troubles to Dean, and to invite questions. But Dean was brash with him, and preoccupied with Sam, and never asked.

When the brothers decided to go after Crowley, and he used Samuel Campbell to banish their guardian, Castiel returned wrathful the moment the demon was about to kill them. He held Crowley's bones, and burned them all but one, as a punishment and a warning. In the aftermath, he was strained enough to admit to Dean that he'd rather be with them than in Heaven, and Dean for the first time offered him their help and told him they were friends. Those were the words that the angel had yearned to hear for a long time, but the moment Dean actually said them, he felt deep fear. If they knew he had made a deal with Crowley, who had just tried to kill them, he would lose this newly uttered friendship. He never again gathered his courage enough to drop hints about his affairs.

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At times, the burden was such that he felt like he was losing his mind. He told himself he still had it all under control, he could keep the King of Hell in line because he was always stronger and smarter. But then he stood powerless in front of Eve, a creature older than him - him, who had witnessed Evolution! How then would Crowley find the power to trap her and learn where Purgatory was? The moment Castiel saw her biting Dean, while he could only watch helpless and yell Dean's name, he was shaken to the core. In that very moment, he knew his second choice was also wrong: he shouldn't have accepted Crowley's help. But he also knew it was too late to turn back, he was in too deep by now, and still had no other alternative to offer him victory.

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So, the farce continued, until the inevitable happened, the one thing he had been trying so hard and for so long to avoid, in order to keep intact the only thread anchoring him to humanity: they learned the truth, and he lost them. They left him trapped in a ring of holy fire, rip for Crowley to cut like a fruit from a tree, and thus opened Purgatory.

"What exactly are you willing to do?" the demon asked him, challenged him.

And Castiel knew, now that his kite-line was cut, he was willing to do whatever it took to win the war. And because he knew that, he went to the snow-clad garden, where slender purple and yellow flowers were springing forth from the frosty ground in celebration of nature's rebirth, and like his Father's Son at His time of turmoil, he confessed his doubt and his weakness. Only his own eyes had no tears to shed, for he hadn't been born from a woman's womb. And although he agonized like Him, and knew he would also be betrayed, and crucified in the morn, he knew that unlike Him, he was a sinner.

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Yet, his humans had not only taught him falling, but also absolution, and when Castiel found that his mind was harrowed by Dean's order, Dean's plea, that Dean had delivered in a moonlighted room with its windows painted full of bloodied sigils to keep him out, he knew he had to break free, and turn against the devil.

When Crowley turned Lisa into a monster, and used her to threaten Ben in order to keep Dean from ruining their plans, Castiel stood immobile. These two humans were innocent. Still, the serpent's venom whispered in his mind, they were the reason he hadn't disturbed Dean, when he thought he was counting on reverse the last moments of his life during Raphael's ultimatum - the reason he had made the wrong choice. But then Dean turned to him and said "Cas!", and appealed "Help them, Cas!", and reminded him "We were family once, they were my family during the most difficult year of my life!", and Castiel found himself again, and acted. Dean's beloved ones were saved, and Castiel confronted Crowley.

"I'll find another way to stop Raphael. Out contract is void", he said coldly, and the demon raged:

"Even _I_ don't break contracts like that!"

.

It was harder to break free from the demon than he had known it'd be, for the irony was that Crowley had not intended for a single moment to honor their deal. The King of Hell had been using him to advance his own ends right from the start, and had been double-crossing him with Raphael long before Castiel tore it all down.

Crowley had approached Castiel because they had a precedent working together to avert the Apocalypse, so he knew he wasn't about to be smitten on sight, and because during the time he was helping the Winchesters find the Horsemen, he had noticed this particular angel was more naïve, more easy to manipulate, more _human_. Castiel always expected the best from people, or fellow angels, or even the King of Hell himself. When he asked him what he wanted in exchange for his help, the demon answered that he wanted half of Purgatory, but of course he was lying, and the poor fool believed him.

What he wanted, Castiel had already given him: a civil war in Heaven, to keep the Host preoccupied and to diminish their numbers, while he could work undisturbed on his plans. The little angel of Thursday had been indeed easy to steer: use his Achilles' heel, the Winchesters, use his infatuation with Dean, use his angelic pride, and he became the ideal tool in Crowley's hands.

It wasn't a coincidence that the demon had approached him in Dean's back yard. Crowley was expecting Castiel for weeks. He had seen how the angel could never stay away for long from the Winchester he had raised from Perdition... well, the Winchester he had raised _whole_ from Perdition. So, he knew that if he was patient to hover long enough near Dean's new house, the angel would show up eventually - if he was still alive, of course, and had not become a blot of feathers under Raphael's heel.

His patience was rewarded an autumn day. Luckily for Crowley's plan, when Castiel showed up, he acted like a proper angel and didn't reveal himself. Instead, he just stood there watching the human with those lovey-dovey eyes, while the clock ticked. An attentive demon could be reminded of the devotion in Eve's eyes gazing at her husband Adam in Eden. Not that Crowley was anywhere near that old to have seen them in person, but he had heard in detail the most famous story of deception in the history of humanity more times than he cared to count.

He cared to re-enact the story, though. It was only fitting, a perfect symmetry: just like the old King of Hell had deceived a woman in love, the new one would deceive a besotted angel. He even appreciated the symbolism of the three of them standing in a garden, just like it had happened in Biblical times. So, he appeared behind Castiel and put his plan in motion, luring the angel away from the future God had brought him back for.

Crowley had made sure the civil war in Heaven wouldn't end anytime soon. He had also been helping Raphael's war machine with souls, which is why Castiel had not been able to win even after Balthazar handed him the weapons he had stolen from Heaven.

Nobody had guessed that Crowley didn't simply want to _rule_ Purgatory. He wanted to change, to _improve _himself, to transform into something much larger than a mere demon, whose fragile fate depended on human bones - bones that those denim-clad nightmares had managed to unearth and that deviant angel had almost burned to ashes. Something as ancient and powerful as the Mother of All, who could transform humans with a mere touch, and in whose presence the angels of the Lord became impotent. Nobody had guessed he had spent almost two years towards that goal and had finally reached it.

And now Castiel wanted to nullify their arrangement, just because he couldn't get over his break-up and move on like normal people did! It was time for Crowley to call down Raphael for a little chit-chat in person.

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In the last fight, after Lisa's blood had spilled for Crowley's spell, and while everyone watched, infused by abject terror, the gate to Purgatory cracked open and the tentacles of a most ancient, exoplanetary entity, described by H. P. Lovecraft, crept through. Crowley transformed and left the house in a rush. Raphael attacked an incapacitated Sam and tried to siphon his soul's energy, with near nuclear results. Dean shouted "Sam!", Castiel shouted "Dean!", and Raphael became history by way of Balthazar's sword.

Dean helped Sam to stand and move towards the door. Castiel knew well it was above his power to stop this entity, just like he had known it the first time he had stood up against an archangel. But just like then, he also knew what he was going to do. He was still an angel of the Lord, a soldier, a guardian, and he'd protect them at any cost.

"Run! I'll lock it back, I'll seal the gate!" he shouted at them. "Run!"

The Winchesters rushed out of the house, but at the door Dean stopped and looked back. It echoed the memory of another moment, rushing out of another house, leaving an angel trapped in a ring of holy fire while the Hordes of Hell were coming. He shouted "Cas!", and the angel locked gazes with him.

"Remember that my true form is the size of your Chrysler building," Castiel said and his mouth formed an awkward smile.

As soon as Dean was safely out, the angel turned to the gate through which the creature was coming, and put forward all his strength, all his grace. It strained to the limit, and wasn't anywhere near enough, but he was full of purpose, of mission, himself again. This time he wouldn't fail, he wouldn't let Dean down, he wouldn't let _them_ down.

His grace flared like a new sun, and abandoned his vessel.

Everything went white.


	2. Epilogue

When he opened his eyes, he found himself in an alley. He tried to stretch his wings, but there were no more. The sun was high, the day hot, and he felt too warm. He looked at his clothes for a few moments in contemplation, feeling the perspiration gathering in his skin.

And then he took off his trench coat and walked into the bright new day.


End file.
